Written By: Inclusive Housing Australia
Katie is a diversity and inclusion advocate, a philanthropist, and a two-time Paralympian, plus world champion, who has been an invaluable member of the Achieve Australia Board since April 2023.
Katie works as the Disability Engagement Manager for MEGT Australia, a not-for-profit that provides support for apprentices, trainees, job seekers, and students with disability.
Katie is heavily involved in the advocation space of disability as an Industry Fellow with Griffith University’s Disability Inclusive Council, an Ambassador of the Australian Sporting Alliance for People with Disability, an Ambassador of Next Sense, a co-patron of the Australian Deaf Games, a Facilitator for the Victoria University Women with Disability Leadership Sport Inclusion Project and co-founder of the Casino and Armidale Fun Run.
IHA Customer Engagement Manager Beck Egan recently sat down with Katie to talk about her achievements both personally and professionally and her perspective on the importance of SDA within the disability community.
Katie's journey started at 5 years of age when she was diagnosed with profound hearing loss. From this young age, she was always a keen athlete. At the age of 21, she completed a sports marketing degree and was diagnosed with Usher syndrome.
Throughout this time, despite her disability challenges and being diagnosed as legally blind at the age of 39, Katie continued completing challenging sporting activities such as marathons and triathlons.
In January 2015, Katie made 2 phone calls: one was to her sister in which she expressed her emotions over the challenges she had been facing with her sight and the legally blind status she had recently received. The other phone call was to Triathlon Australia and in a classic example of turning a negative into a positive, Katie was told they had been looking for visually impaired athletes to compete in the Rio Paralympic games.
18 months later, Katie found herself standing on the gold medal podium at the Rio Paralympics, having won Australia's first gold medal in the para-triathlon.
It was Katie’s involvement in the Paralympian team that was the catalyst for 
changing her perspective on not just her own disability but on that of those around her.
“Being part of a Paralympian team of 400 fellow athletes, surrounded by legends made me realise that disability doesn’t matter”.
Katie talked about the challenges of having a “hidden '' disability and how in her early years, she simply soldiered on and put up with the difficulties her disabilities placed on her life. She spoke of workplace discrimination and other adversity faced by people with disability and the impact of these things on quality of life.
Katie’s Paralympian journey has led her to feel more empowered to advocate for people with disability since her retirement from the high-performance sport in 2020 after the Tokyo Paralympics. Katie knew she had to do more to change the world for people with disability.
In January 2017, Katie established her “Sport Access Foundation” with the purpose of providing grants for young athletes with disability in order for them to access their sports more easily. The Foundation has provided over $70,000 in grants so far and three of these grant recipients have already gone on to compete at the Paralympics.
Katie shared the specific example of one of the grant recipients, Jamieson Leeson, a 21-year-old Boccia athlete from Dunedoo who began her athletic journey by having to travel 300 km in order to train for her sport.
Jamieson’s story highlights one of the biggest challenges for athletes with disability which is having access to a sport that is modified for their disability.
The foundation aims to show young athletes with disability that they matter and deserve the support to compete. Katie was pleased to report that Jamieson’s grant supported her to attend the Tokyo Paralympics and that she is currently training for Paris 2024.
Katie talked to Beck about how important purpose-driven organisations like IHA and Achieve are because they “empower people with disability and give them the basic human right to have decent housing that is integrated and can enable them to live in the communities they want to live in.”
She emphasised that “it is a fundamental human right to have access to housing to live a thriving life” and that “SDA is about contributing to the building of an integrated, vibrant diverse community in which everyone thrives”. It is about building connections and self-esteem.
IHA is proud to be able to contribute to the quality of the lives of people with disability and to provide connections between these people, and their communities.
Katie enjoys living in her community where she can walk everywhere with her guide dog Duffrey. These walks are a reflection of “the increasing visibility of the wonderfully diverse community we live in”. So much so, that when Katie is out without Duffrey, everyone wonders more about him than her.
To learn more about Katie or donate to her foundation go to her website.